


Moments from a Non-Linear Life

by aces



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Honeymoon, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-05 18:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20493038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: Just remember, the Doctor isterribleat vacations.





	Moments from a Non-Linear Life

**Author's Note:**

> General spoilers for the last series; throwaway and brief references to earlier eras. Takes place sometime shortly after “The Big Bang.”

“You know what you two need?” the Doctor said, looking up from the TARDIS console between Amy and Rory. They glanced at each other and then at him. “A honeymoon.”

Once again, the newlyweds exchanged dubious glances. “Oh, come on!” the Doctor said. “It’ll be brilliant! I can take you two _anywhere_. Anywhen! The crystalline beaches of Mondroni IV! The entirely natural glass sculptures on Glaaaswegen! The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964—I can even get us backstage passes if you want!”

“You’re offering to take us on a honeymoon?” Rory said. “You do remember the ‘date’ you took us on, right?”

“Yeah,” Amy put in. “Vampire fish. I’d say that one went really well, Doctor, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, you two.” The Doctor looked at them fondly from across the TARDIS console. “This time will be fabulous. I promise.”

*

“Amy! Doctor! _Amy_!” Rory ran right up to the edge of the mountain cliff and pinwheeled his arms in order to stop himself hurtling over the edge like they just had.

He’d seen them standing too close; he’d been worried, about to call out a remonstrance, and then he’d seen the _giant bloody alien bird_ swoop down and catch them with one of its _giant alien bird claws_, casually shoving them over the side as if they weighed nothing, as if they weren’t people about whom certain other people cared quite deeply thankyouverymuch, and oh god he’d started running as soon as he saw that bird but he hadn’t been fast enough and—

“_Amy_!” Rory hollered and then told himself to stop behaving like an ass and figure out a way to get down there that wouldn’t involve hurling himself over the edge too.

It was rocky, and there were tree branches and plants and other things for people to catch themselves on and break bones, and there were probably more _bloody giant alien animals_ that could attack or hunt them down, and why the hell had the Doctor brought them here?

Rory took several deep breaths and wished he had some kind of medical kit with him. And then he started finding crevices, toe- and hand-holds, anything he could use to start down the side of the nice little mountain upon which they’d found themselves.

He’d heard Amy scream, the Doctor yell; he’d heard them crashing down, but he didn’t think the sounds had lasted for very long. He hoped that meant they hadn’t fallen far, that they’d managed to stop themselves, and not that they had been stopped. “Amy! Doctor!” he yelled again. “If you can hear me, please call back so I can find you!”

“Rory!” he heard Amy’s voice, and he had to clutch a nearby tree branch because his knees suddenly stopped functioning. “Oh, thank god, Rory, we’re over here!”

He skidded, and fell, and spent as much time on his bum or his knees as he did upright, but he managed to make his way to his friends. Amy was sitting up, holding her wrist protectively to herself, covered in scratches and dirt and already-forming bruises; the Doctor was sprawled next to her, unconscious—_please let him be unconscious_, Rory thought to himself as he slid in dead leaves and dirt over to his wife and friend. He stopped himself from hugging Amy tightly and instead inspected her quickly, focusing in on the wrist. “May I?” he asked, and she nodded shakily, hissing as she held her arm out toward him.

He probed it as gently as he could, and she still yelled and tried to swat him with her good hand, and he yelled back because he wasn’t really very good at crises, particularly when they involved Amy, and then she sniffled a little and he kissed her forehead and said, “Sorry. It’s a bad sprain, but I don’t think you’ve actually fractured or broken any bones. If that’s any consolation.”

“At the moment, no.” She was still sniffling, and she took his hand and squeezed it tight, and then she went on, “He’s breathing still, and I don’t know…”

Rory turned to the Doctor and inspected him a little more thoroughly than he had Amy, feeling guilty for starting with her rather than the obviously worse-off patient, knowing he would have felt guilty either way. Both the Doctor’s hearts were beating—the double beat still threw him off, creeped him out a bit—he was just as covered in bruises and cuts as Amy, including a truly nasty one along his thigh that might actually require some stitching—and there was a giant bloody lump on his forehead.

“You didn’t turn him over, did you?” Rory asked, and he hoped like hell he didn’t sound accusing as he gently probed the bump.

“Of course not; you taught me that.” Amy sounded disdainful, in pain, and sniffly. “I don’t know what happened; I think he must have hit it as we came down and then ended up lying face-up. Can you—can you do anything for him?”

“With what?” Rory spread his arms, showing her how empty his hands and pockets were, how useless he was. “We’re in the middle of a _forest_ on another _planet_ on the side of a _mountain_, I have no supplies, and even if I did his anatomy is so alien I’d be afraid to do anything in case I made him worse—” Amy was staring at him, wide-eyed and pleading, and Rory shut his eyes and took some more deep breaths. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

“I hope you two aren’t fighting over me,” they heard a third voice say weakly, and both stared down at the Doctor. His eyes weren’t open, but his lips were still moving. “No, really, I mean that literally. If you must fight, please do it elsewhere; my head is killing me.”

“Doctor!” Amy shouted in delight, and the Doctor winced and then winced again because the wince pulled at his forehead and his lump, and she made an aborted move to hug him, stopping herself just before she touched him. Instead she took his hand and squeezed it, carefully.

“Can you open your eyes?” Rory asked quietly, taking the Doctor’s wrist to try to read his pulse. He would really, really have to get the Doctor to tell him about Time Lord physiology sometime. Maybe there was a book in the TARDIS library. It was probably in whatever language Time Lords spoke. Oh _god_.

“I’ll be fine,” the Doctor said, putting his free hand up to his lumpy temple. “Just give me a minute, alright?”

It took him longer than a minute, and when he insisted he could stand on his own he promptly fell over again, but eventually with much swearing and many setbacks, the trio made it back up the mountain to the TARDIS.

“_That_ was not your honeymoon,” the Doctor said once they were inside the time machine, as they were depositing him on a bed near the console room. His eyes were closed again, and Rory was itching to track down the medical bay and dig out bandages and disinfectant and other useful things. “I promise, though, next stop.”

“Yeah,” Amy rolled her eyes, “right.”

*

“Is all the running _really_ necessary?” Rory huffed as the three of them hurtled down a long, shiny, curving corridor. The robotic soldiers following them didn’t have much speed, but they were—as the trio had already discovered—relentless. “Can’t you find us a planet where the villains are, y’know, sort of _leisurely_?”

“That sounds boring,” the Doctor said. He wasn’t out of breath at all, of course. “Anyway, running’s good. Good for the heart, the blood flow, the brain. You should be encouraging the running, Nurse Rory, not discouraging it.”

“Could you both shut up?” Amy suggested. “And figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of here?”

“I have a plan,” the Doctor said. The corridor was featureless, no doors anywhere. “I have a fabulous plan. I just need to keep running for it to actually form fully.”

Rory made a mental note to buy better sneakers.

*

“Doctor!” Rory jogged up to the Doctor, grinning broadly. “You finally made it!”

“Yes,” the Doctor nodded, looking around approvingly at the makeshift hospital in which he found himself, located in a disused warehouse. He’d been separated from Amy and Rory days ago, when the tsunami hit. “Yes, here I am, and you seem to be doing quite well for yourself, Rory.”

“It’s not just me!” Rory sounded positively enthusiastic. “Amy and I ran into this Navy doctor who was here on holiday, he got everything organized, really amazingly nice guy. Oh! There he is!” He waved at an older gentleman in a white lab coat, who obligingly joined them. “Doctor, this is Doctor—”

“Harry Sullivan!” the Doctor crowed in delight and pumped the other man’s hand vigorously. “Harry, my dear chap, how have you been?”

“Wait,” Rory said, “you know him already?”

“Know him?” the Doctor said. He still hadn’t let go of Harry’s hand. “He used to travel with me, Rory!”

“Not for very long, mind you,” Harry Sullivan said with a smile and gently extricated his hand. “I assume you are _the_ Doctor? Sarah used to say you could completely change how you looked, but I never quite believed the old girl.”

Rory frowned in confusion, but before he could ask, Doctor Sullivan and the Doctor wandered off, reminiscing.

“But?” Rory said to the empty air where the other two men had been standing.

Amy came up behind and slipped her arm around his. “Oh yeah,” she said, “Did I forget to mention? The Doctor knows _everybody_.”

*

“Come on, you two!” the Doctor called back over his shoulder as he sped away on his ice skates. “No shilly-shallying!”

“Who says ‘shilly-shallying’?” Rory wondered aloud without looking up from his feet; he had a grimly determined look on his face as he clung to Amy.

“Oi!” Amy yelled at the Doctor’s back, clinging grimly herself to Rory. “Not all of us are so capable at this sort of thing, you know! _Some_ of us haven’t ice-skated in over fifteen years!”

“I haven’t skated in over five hundred,” the Doctor confessed, skating back toward them. He stopped in front of them with an oddly graceful twirl, though he quickly stopped the jazz hands when he saw their unappreciative looks. “Aren’t you having fun?”

Both humans glared at him, huddled together in a desperate attempt not to fall on their arses. “Is the entire planet like this?” Amy asked instead of answering his question.

“Only about 65% of it,” the Doctor said. “The other 45% is snow-covered landmasses. Perfect opportunities for snowball fights!” he added cheerily. “All we have to do is find some of those landmasses. No problem at all.”

The two humans continued to glare at him. “Doctor,” Rory said, “are there any people in trouble on this planet?”

“It’s uninhabited,” said the Doctor.

“Are there any megalomaniacs determined to use this planet to take over the universe?” Amy continued the line of questioning.

“Not likely,” the Doctor said. “What would they do, throw giant snowballs at their enemies?”

They continued to glare at the Doctor. He dug the point of one of his skates into the ice, looking down at his feet. “We could go back to the TARDIS and make hot chocolate?” he ventured at last and chanced a peek up at his companions.

“I’ll find the marshmallows,” Rory said, immediately swinging around.

Of course Amy fell on her bum, unprepared for his move, but she pulled him down with her, and he managed to grab the Doctor in his tumble, and they all three fell together on the ice, so it was alright.

*

“You cannot seriously expect me to leave the TARDIS dressed like this,” Rory announced as he stepped down into the console room.

The Doctor looked up and grinned. “And why not? You look very fetching.”

“I look,” Rory said, “like an idiot.”

He wore dark blue silk breeches and matching coat with full skirts and elaborate embroidery, a weskit of paler blue falling to below his waist. The sleeves of his shirt peeked out from below his coat, made of delicate lace. His buckled shoes had a small heel. Amy had insisted he put on a wig with a queue.

“Complete and utter idiot,” Rory said, looking down at himself, “and I really, really don’t understand why you’re insisting that Amy and I go out looking like this while you’re still in your usual clothes and oh my god, you’re beautiful.”

He’d glanced up behind him as he spoke, hearing his wife carefully making her way down the stairs, and now he turned fully to face her and gape appreciatively. She wore a dress of dusky rose, silk panniers exaggerating her hips and lower body, sleeves tight until they ended at her elbows in flowing lace, embroidery and fancy stitching everywhere. Rory instinctively held out his hand to help her down the last few steps, and she gave him a grin and little curtsy, and then wobbled.

“Okay, could’ve done without the period shoes,” she muttered, her grip tightening on Rory’s hand as she steadied herself. She took a deep breath and tossed her head—carefully, so as not to dislodge the elaborate wig she was wearing. “Well, Doctor?” she said. “Do we pass muster?”

“You look marvelous,” the Doctor beamed, admiring the pair. “Both of you! Oh, well done; really, I couldn’t have done a better job myself. You are going to completely wow Louis XV’s court looking like that.” He started ushering them toward the doors. “Now, just remember, if you run into Madamde de Pampadour, don’t mention my name, alright? You shouldn’t see her, there’s no need, but just in case.”

“Why not, exactly?” Amy asked, discreetly holding her full skirts up so she wouldn’t trip.

The Doctor looked shifty. “No reason,” he said.

“This isn’t like Casanova, is it?” Rory said. “If it involves a chicken, I honestly don’t want to know.”

“No chickens, just clockwork monsters,” was the Doctor’s cheerful reply. He grandly held the main TARDIS doors open for them. “Your audience awaits,” he said. “Go knock ‘em dead.” He shooed his two companions out the doors, and then stuck his head out after them. “Only not literally, please, if you wouldn’t mind.” He looked solemn for a moment and then disappeared back into the TARDIS.

“You remember I failed history pretty spectacularly, right?” Rory said to Amy.

“No worries,” Amy said comfortably, “I always fancied myself wearing this sort of dress.”

“Amy, you’ll wear _any_thing,” Rory pointed out.

“Mmm,” Amy glanced over at him and quirked an eyebrow. “And don’t you know it.”

She sailed off to distract the court so the Doctor could do his thing, and Rory—surreptitiously taking the opportunity to admire her fancy dress from behind—followed.

*

“You think so?” the Doctor said, with that odd little half-smile that always made Amy tense, her fight-or-flight reflexes kicking in. He stood up, looking at the woman who was currently holding a gun to their heads, figuratively if not at the moment literally. “You really think so?”

She glared at the Doctor defiantly. “I _know_ so,” she said.

Amy glanced at Rory, on the other side of the laboratory, and tried to indicate with her eyebrows that he should get ready. He stared at her blankly. She sighed, silently.

“Well,” the Doctor’s voice was still quiet, conversational, all nice-and-easy-going-young-mannish, and that used to fool Amy when she started traveling with him, until she remembered better. “Well, actually, I don’t think so. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.”

“You?” The woman laughed scornfully. “You don’t know anything, you idiotic fool. I’m surprised you know how to tie your own shoelaces.”

“I remember this,” the Doctor said, still with that half-smile. “I remember being underestimated because I looked so young. And you know what?”

She turned away, back to her experiments, dismissing him as a threat. Amy slowly stood up, watching the Doctor’s every move. Rory caught on, finally, and stood up on the other side of the vast room as well, trying to make it look casual. “No, I don’t know,” the woman said, sounding bored, “but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“They were always wrong back then too,” the Doctor said.

*

“No, no!” Ella Fitzgerald stood on the stage, singing her heart out, “they can’t take that away from me. No, they can’t take that away from me…”

The applause was tremendous, not least because the Doctor jumped out of his seat clapping so hard his hands were almost a blur of motion. Amy jumped up next to him—she’d never been much of a jazz or American musical fan, but Ella’s voice was beautiful and the Doctor’s enthusiasm was often contagious—and Rory looked a little embarrassed and then shrugged and jumped up too.

“Oh, she’s brilliant, isn’t she?” the Doctor gushed outside in the sultry September night, as he led them back to the TARDIS. “Superb vocals! And such presence! Definitely my favorite performance I’ve seen by her so far.”

“How many exactly have you seen?” Amy asked in amused curiosity.

“Oh, a handful,” the Doctor waved an airy hand, the other hand busy searching for the TARDIS key. “No more than a dozen. Probably.”

Amy smirked at Rory, who rolled his eyes and grinned back, putting his arm around her shoulders while they waited for the Doctor to unlock the door. The Time Lord led them inside, humming under his breath, not quite in any tune that a human ear would appreciate.

“Somebody loves me,” he started singing, still a bit off-key, as he bounded up to the console to begin pressing switches, flipping levers, and typing out nonsense on various keyboards. Rory pulled Amy into a little spin, and she laughed in surprise, and then he pulled her back into his arms for a slow dance, and her laugh turned into a soft, secret smile. “I wonder who…”

The Doctor sent them spinning off into the vortex, still singing while Amy and Rory danced.

*

“‘Where am I?’ is a perfectly legitimate, non-lame question,” Rory argued, ducking out from under the tent opening, narrowly avoiding it whacking him in the face as he followed Amy out into the desert. “Under the circumstances.”

“And what circumstances are those?” Amy scoffed. “Just because you got a little bit knocked unconscious—”

“We travel in a time and space machine!” Rory threw his arms up, and Amy stopped moving and blinked at him in surprise. “Tomorrow we’ll be five hundred years ago! In a different _galaxy_! You expect me to keep track what planet I’ve been knocked unconscious on?”

Amy blinked and considered. “Excellent point,” she said. She tapped him on the lips and then gave him a brief but comprehensive kiss. “I shall forgive you the lapse in creativity.”

“Thank you so much,” Rory rolled his eyes and then winced, rubbing the back of his head. Amy immediately walked behind him to inspect it for herself. “Oooh,” she said in sympathy, “you _did_ get a knock on the head, didn’t you?”

“Thanks for noticing,” Rory said dryly.

Amy stood up on tiptoe to kiss the lump, then wrapped her arms around him from behind. “Sorry,” she said softly, and Rory smiled and turned around in her arms to give her a kiss, resting his own arms on her shoulders.

“I knew there was a reason I married you,” he said.

*

“So you’ve been other people?” Amy looked down her nose from her Doctor to the other one, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “But you’re still the same person? How does that work exactly?”

“It’s really quite complicated,” the Doctor—braces- rather than cravat-wearing—sounded impatient, and weary, and a tiny bit embarrassed. His other self was busy fiddling with some wiring and his version of the sonic screwdriver, but he glanced up at Amy’s Doctor for a brief, knowing, and also tiny-bit-embarrassed look.

“You’re not supposed to both be here,” Rory realized, also looking between them. “Are you? You’re not going to cause some massive temporal explosion or something, are you?”

Amy blinked at her husband; sometimes she forgot he’d been around a while, and read up a bit on things; and then he pulled stuff like that out of his hat and reminded her all over again. “Oh please,” the velvet-coated Doctor scoffed, not bothering to look up again from his work. “As if either of us have ever done _that_.”

Amy’s and Rory’s Doctor looked a bit shifty. “Doctor,” Amy said warningly.

“Not _often_,” he said. “And certainly not because two of us were co-existing in the same space-time. Why, you wouldn’t _believe_ how many versions of me there were at Woodstock—”

The Doctor in the bottle-green frockcoat coughed at that and hurriedly stood up, waving his sonic screwdriver. “I’m done down here,” he said. “Next we need to get up to the top of the tower and finish that little project. Care to come with me?” He smiled at his other self charmingly.

Braces-Doctor tapped his sonic screwdriver absently against his lips. “Oh yes,” he said, “that’s right, the other end of the system. Well, nothing for it, I suppose. After you?”

“How are you at heights?” Amy and Rory heard the other Doctor say as both versions left the room. “Ever since that fall at the Pharos Project—”

“Oh, I know, I remember that one. Very unpleasant.”

Amy turned to Rory. Rory looked confused and worried. He often looked confused and worried, though, so Amy continued to focus on the thought that had just popped into her head as the Time Lord left, quite literally talking to himself. “I bet he’s younger than our Doctor,” she said.

“He’s not _our_ Doctor,” Rory started.

“Oh hush, of course he is,” Amy waved a dismissive hand.

“Alright, yes, he is,” Rory muttered. “What about it?”

“He doesn’t know,” Amy turned to look back at the doorway through which the two men had left. “That’s why our Doctor looked so sad when we found him. He doesn’t know yet he’s the last one.”

Rory’s eyes widened as Amy’s words sunk in, and then he took his wife’s hand and squeezed.

*

The Doctor could hear giggling and splashing coming from the pool. “Hello,” he said, bounding in with a grin, “what’s going on—oh.” He swung around and stared furiously at the wall. “Oh dear.”

“Hello, Doctor.” Rory sounded resigned.

“Oh, _hello_, Doctor,” Amy said. “Care to join us?”

“Amy!”

“It’s just a suggestion.”

“I just remembered something very important I have to take care of in the console room,” the Doctor said. He was still talking to the wall. “Vital. Could take me hours to work on. I’ll be there if you need me. And nowhere else. Absolutely _nowhere else_ in the TARDIS.”

He felt a little spray of water hit the back of his trouser legs, could imagine Amy flicking the water at his heels. “You’ll know where to find us if you need us,” Amy sing-songed, and then there was another splash and another giggle, and the Doctor fled to safety.

*

“Hello,” the Doctor said, walking up to the little boy who was standing frozen in the middle of the busy Liverpool street, terrified to move in any direction lest the cars on either side of his narrow median run him over. “I’m the Doctor. Are you lost?”

The Doctor held out his hand expectantly, and the little boy stared up at him, wide-eyed. Amy and Rory hovered on one side of the street, with another slightly older and slightly hysterical boy, watching for a break in traffic, which seemed bloody unlikely when they weren’t anywhere near a zebra crossing. “It’s alright,” the Doctor said, his voice calm and friendly, pitched low over the sounds of traffic on all sides of them. “I’m a Doctor, remember? You can trust me.”

The little boy took his hand.

“There you are, then,” the Doctor said, crouching next to him so he could speak at the boy’s eye level. “Isn’t that better? I always find it’s better when I have somebody else to hold onto. Now, are you lost?”

The boy nodded. Tears started welling up in his eyes, and the Doctor squeezed his hand.

“It’s very upsetting when you’re lost,” the Doctor said. “It’s happened to me _loads_ of times. Were you separated from somebody?” The boy nodded again. “Mum, dad, brother, sister, grandparent, cousin, aunt, uncle, or somebody not related to you at all?”

“B-Bobby,” the boy hiccupped. “My brother. He got mad at me because I wanted to play some more and we were supposed to go home to our mums and he crossed the street with-without me…” He screwed his eyes shut but couldn’t stop the sobs that broke free.

“Shhh, shhh,” the Doctor said, giving the boy a quick hug. “We do stupid things when we’re angry at the people we love,” he went on. “Your brother’s very sorry about it now, you know. Do you see him over there? He’s waiting with my friends.”

The little boy peeked around the Doctor. He stopped crying, sniffled, rubbed at his eyes. The other boy waved a little and looked about ready to start crying himself.

“You see?” the Doctor smiled. “Now, hold on tight to my hand, and we’re going to get these cars to let us pass, alright?”

The Doctor raised his arm, sonic screwdriver in hand, and—magically, it appeared—the cars on that side of the road stopped moving. He and the boy crossed to the other side, where the older boy hugged his younger brother. The Doctor put the screwdriver down, and the cars started moving again.

“Now,” said the Doctor, fixing Bobby with a stern glare. “You’re never going to do that again, are you?”

Bobby shook his head. He held his younger brother’s hand. “How much further till you get home?” the Doctor asked.

“It’s just down there,” Bobby nodded a few houses down. “We don’t have to cross any more streets. Please don’t tell our mums,” he added in a burst of fear.

“That depends,” the Doctor said. “You know you shouldn’t have done that?” Bobby nodded. “And you _promise_ you won’t ever let your anger get the better of your brother’s safety again?”

“I swear,” Bobby said.

“Then we won’t tell your mums,” the Doctor said. He knelt down again, looked Bobby in the eye. “It’s important to take care of the people you love,” he said. “Don’t forget that, alright?”

Bobby nodded, and his younger brother took the opportunity to give the Doctor a tiny, fierce hug. The Doctor nodded to them both, Amy and Rory smiled, and the boys walked down the street, holding each other’s hand.

“So who are they?” Amy asked as they watched to make sure the boys got inside safely, and the Doctor looked at her, puzzled. “Oh, come on. Bobby’s going to be a world-famous doctor who created a vaccine or something, right? Or his brother’s going to invent some new way for people to get around long distances, yeah?”

“Maybe,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “Maybe not. I just saw a lost little boy who needed help.”

*

“Why did you become a nurse, Rory?”

Rory blinked. “We are being held prisoner—in chains, no less—for a crime we hadn’t realized we committed, and you want to ask me about my career choices?”

The Doctor tried to shrug, despite his chains. “It’s a way to pass the time?” he suggested. “Though I really must say, being put in chains for picking the local fruit seems a bit excessive.”

“At least Amy refrained,” Rory said. He sounded glum. And hungry. They hadn’t even had a chance to enjoy the fruit, which seemed to be something like a cherry-strawberry combination, before they were caught.

“So go on then,” the Doctor encouraged him. “Nursing?”

Rory thought about it for a moment. “I dunno, exactly,” he said at last. “I had to do _some_thing, and I’ve never been particularly fussed over blood or stuff. And I like—” He stumbled to a halt.

“Yes?”

“I like helping people,” he admitted at last.

The Doctor smiled at him, that gentle smile that made Rory think of his grandfathers and uncles, the old men who loved him. “Good answer,” the Time Lord said.

“Why do you call yourself the Doctor?” Rory felt emboldened enough to ask. “Do you, er, do you have one? A doctorate of some kind, I mean?”

“Glasgow,” the Doctor said, almost to himself, with another fond smile. And then he looked at Rory and added, “I like helping people too. And people usually trust doctors.”

Rory remembered those lost little boys and grinned a little. He shifted, attempting to find some way to relieve the pressure on his shoulders and arms. “So on average,” he said, “how much of your time would you say is spent in prisons?”

“Oh, well,” the Doctor said, “difficult to say. You know how it is, all depends on the month and the planet. Earth was my prison once.”

“You wha?” Rory blinked, startled.

“Oh yes. My people took away my ability to fly the TARDIS. I was pretty insufferable for a few years there,” the Doctor said. “I’ve never handled confinement all that well.”

“That, I can believe,” Rory agreed, surprised that the Doctor would so casually mention his people when they were now all gone. He shifted again. He glanced over at the Doctor, who was busy staring at his feet. Rory cleared his throat. The Doctor didn’t look up. Rory looked away and then straightened himself up a bit. “Doctor,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a question.”

“Fire away,” said the Doctor, “we neither of us have anything better to do.”

“I know why you picked Amy,” Rory said. “I mean, I guess it was sort of inevitable, though I still wonder about your timing.”

“She did not tell me it was the night before her wedding,” the Doctor would have raised his hand if he could. He did try, flapping it a bit in the manacle. “That first time she traveled with me. As it were.”

“But why did you come back for me too?” Rory looked away, across the cell. “Why did you tell me to stay?”

“And leave Amy without you? Absolutely not,” said the other man. “And besides, a doctor should always have a nurse nearby, just in case. What’s a doctor without a nurse?”

Rory looked up at him quickly, just as the cell door clanged open. “Well, would you look here,” they heard Amy drawl as the prison guard crossed the room to unhook them both. Rory’s arms fell to his sides, and he almost groaned at the release of pressure and the near-instantaneous pins-and-needles along his nervous system. Amy strode over to him and began massaging his shoulders. “Sorry I took so long,” she whispered near his ear, and he reached up over his shoulder, stiffly, to rest his hand on hers. It felt good to stretch the muscles in a different direction for a little while.

The Doctor, naturally, seemed perfectly fine. He was having a chat with the prison guard, probably making the guard his new best friend. “Thanks,” Rory said in an undertone.

“Oh, it was the least I could do,” Amy said with studied innocence, “since I _wasn’t the one stealing the fruit_.”

“It was a perfectly legitimate mistake,” the Doctor joined the conversation, ushering them out of the cell before the guard got any ideas, new friend or no. “Could have happened to anyone.”

“It just happened to happen to you two,” Amy agreed. “Again.” She wrapped her arm around Rory’s as they went from the prison into the near-blinding light of two suns. “Oh, my boys! What would you two do without me?”

“Good question,” Rory grinned. The trio walked down the shaded street toward the TARDIS, mutually agreeing without words that after their little stint in prison they didn’t really need to stay. “A doctor and a nurse need their Amy, after all.”

The Doctor laughed and nudged Rory’s shoulder, on the other side of where Amy still was holding onto him. Amy blinked, a little confused, and Rory’s grin just widened.

*

The TARDIS landed. The travelers stepped out. They were in the middle of an outdoor marketplace on a grey day. Everyone was staring at them. And then as one the people in the marketplace bowed.

“It’s the Doctor!” they called. “He’s come back!”

“Oh, not again,” the Doctor said. At least he had the decency to sound embarrassed.

*

“It is a great honor to see you again, Merlin,” Ancelyn ap Gwalchmai smiled and bowed his head in greeting.

“Merlin?” Amy repeated.

“Anceyln, old chap! How did you recognize me?”

“I would know your visage anywhere, sir,” the knight said. His hair was faded, turning grey, but otherwise he barely looked as if he’d aged at all since the last time he and the Doctor had crossed paths. “No matter what aspect you choose to wear.”

“Are we going to _keep_ running into people he knows?” Rory wondered.

Later, when he saw how handy Ancelyn was with a sword, he was actually quite grateful for the friends the Doctor kept.

*

“_Finally_ you got us to Rio!”

“Ah, yes, here we are. You know, the last time I was in Rio, I ran into a pack of werewolves?”

“…”

*

“Right then,” Amy said, bursting out of the TARDIS. “Where are we this time?” She heard Rory and the Doctor come out behind her but she was too busy looking around. Staring in overawed shock, more like.

Pristine white beaches, beautiful clear green water with small white-capped waves lapping against the beaches, clear blue-purple sky overhead… “No, really,” Rory said aloud for her, “where _are_ we?”

“According to the scanner, this is Boundris. I’ve never been here before; it’s very dull,” the Doctor told them. “Never been inhabited by a sentient species, too far out from any other galaxy, let alone planet, for most species to find.”

“It’s _gorgeous_,” Amy said. It was sunny, verging on hot, but there was a light breeze and there were leafy green trees nearby providing some inviting-looking shade.

“It is rather, isn’t it?” The Doctor sounded surprised. “It must be because it’s in the middle of nowhere that nobody has turned it into some sort of tourist trap. Oh my goodness,” he suddenly added and smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh, oh, _oh_, of course! Yes!”

“What?” Amy and Rory both reluctantly turned their eyes away from the beach to stare at their friend.

“This!” The Doctor flung his arms out, encompassing the world around them. “It’s perfect!”

“Yeah, I thought we’d already established that,” Rory said.

“For your _honeymoon_!”

Amy and Rory blinked. The Doctor beamed. And then Amy threw her head back and laughed and laughed, and so did Rory, and then he kissed her because she was his wife and he could, and the Doctor laughed with them and threw his arms around them both and said, “I told you I’d find you something fabulous, didn’t I?”

“You already have, Doctor,” Amy said with a fond grin, “you already have.”

* 

This is the sound of voices three  
Singing together in harmony  
Surrendering to the mystery  
This is the sound of voices three  
~ “One Voice,” Wailin’ Jennys


End file.
